ff 12 does not feel like final fantasy to me

[black orb]

I think that's why it took me over a year to complete the game.

>>> A year! ..
I wish I had an RPG that entertained me for a whole year, but thats impossible..

[ANGRYWOLF]

I loved the plot and story of the game, but the pacing was bloody awrful. I mean, it seemed likehours before the next plot point came along. I think that's why it took me over a year to complete the game.

Absolutely true as far as the pacing was concerned. But there was a disconnect.I never cared about what happened to the characters.

I stopped playing last spring after I couldn't beat zodiark.

The great crystal, the lighthouse, the hidden area of Henne's mines..I wonder why they made those areas so confusing and the marks/summons you had to fight there so hard when your regular enemies including the final boss, or so I 've been told ,wasn't anywhere near as difficult.

[Edge7]

I loved the plot and story of the game, but the pacing was bloody awrful. I mean, it seemed likehours before the next plot point came along. I think that's why it took me over a year to complete the game.

Yeah, the pacing is what lost me as well. Despite moderatly level grinding (killing every monster in the area, but not makings a chore of it), the Leviathan still kicked my ass. So I level grinded for a while and eventually forgot what I was doing on the ship story-wise in the first place. I'm not saying that's my problem, but I did find it annoying. The plot I find to be well written, but once again, sometimes I lose my sense of purpose. I think the game would have been nice with a synopsis (/synapsis?) like the tales series so I could refresh on what was happening in Ivalice (it helped in War of the Lions). Also, while I liked the characters, I also found them to be a little uninteresting, same with the enviroments. I agree with Wolf Kanno that the game does have it's share of memorable moments, but I was just hoping for more. IMHO, the game feels like Runescape exchanging the online activity with a story (I just realized that sounds like something said in a newgrounds animation Not the Final Fantasy XII, but it's an accurate analogy.) I typed a bit more than I wanted to, but that's my rant.

[Shattered Dreamer]

Given that this game got over 400 hours of my life so yeah this game definitely felt like Final Fantasy to me

[destinyislands]

I hate to say it, but I couldn't follow the plot at all. I mean I got some parts, but I honestly don't understand the different countries/regions in the world, I don't get why everyone is chasing whatever they're chasing, I don't know what people are trying to do or accomplish in the game. It's all just too crazy for me, but I play for the good graphics and fun of leveling my characters. That, and it's FF

[champagne supernova]

I think that FFXII was more Western than previous Final Fantasies. I got Elder Scrolls: Oblivion and I just feel that FFXII and it both have a similar feel. And the one area that I think irritates a lot of FF fans is the mechanisms around game and story progression. In XII, you're kind of told you need to find X at Y, and then you trek along some field until you reach a dungeon, fight the monsters in it, then come out and walk all the way back to where you started. And there isn't a problem with this. I enjoy Oblivion immensely. And XII has the qualities that I enjoy in Oblivion - a beautifully detailed world, where you get your characters to progress. And, as in Oblivion, the combat was quite autonomous, but there was still a bit of a challenge, and you always felt this sense of exploration.

The thing is, I buy Final Fantasy because I want its kind of experience, so when something which kind of changes the formula so drastically, I won't enjoy the new merits, because it isn't why I bought it. If that makes sense.

And I will state categorically here that I think FFXII definitely had a better story than Oblivion (because that is not hard) and there was a greater attachment to the main characters (again, not too hard). The problem is that a lot of the story gets lost because I now have to explore so far before I find out where I'm going next. For example (and this summarises it for me), why does the Dalmascan Sandsea have to be so big? And not only so big, why does it have to be so complex that it takes even longer to get to the Tomb of Raithwall? And the Sandsea wasn't particularly pretty or interesting either. So I was bored. For many hours. That by the time that I had got through to the other side, I had a lot of what I was feeling about the story at the time and had to start again.

And this happened again and again. So yeah, pacing ruined many of the elements of the story - and I think the reason the pacing was off was it became very much like a WRPG like Oblivion without realising that nobody cares about the Oblivion main story very much and doesn't mind having to spend 7 hours of pure gameplay lost in a dungeon before the story progresses.

So, that's my new view on it. I wouldn't say its the best RPG or Final Fantasy ever (mine I think is Vagrant Story), but it is a good RPG. Unfortunately, its target audience was expecting something different and as such measured it by a very specific set of criteria.

[ANGRYWOLF]

I just think Matsuno's alleged breakdown and abrupt departure from Square disrupted his vision and implimentation of that in the game and contributes to its rather disjointed and uneven nature.

[Jibril]

where were the epic moments? where were the plot twists? where was the EMOTION?

You mean the pseudo-intellectual babble that was engineered to appeal to angsty pre-teens for sales purposes?

They replaced it with good dialogue